Twin flourescents.

That reminds me of a story TMH's daughter told me about when she was a paramedic in London.

Look for the scissor symbol on the bottom right image:-)

I was a call out to an apartment that the call handler had heard the words "stabbed" before the caller went silent.

Rebecca arrived first but was not allowed entry until the armed police arrived. She went in with the armed police to find a bloke that had cut the wires to his smoke alarm with a pair of scissors because it was bleeping and keeping him awake at night.

The resulting 230V belt threw him of the step ladders and he stabbed himself in the leg with the scissors as he landed on the floor. He passed out half way through the 999 phone call.

The rewiring to ? fully? convert to LED, rather than just swap the starter for a fake one and leave the rest as is, doesn?t really need you to take the assembly down. True, it is more accessible but it is more work. You can do it all in situ.

BTW, the cheapest place I found for LED tubes is Toolstation. About 60% of the cost of the ones in Screwfix and seem as bright etc. Can?t comment on life yet but unless they are significantly worse?

I assume LEDs are of simiar output? So if I was happy with twin florries I'd need twin LEDs?

No! There's no such thing as 'twin LEDs', the ones from CPC above have dozens of SMD LEDs in them. LEDs aren't tubular by nature.

You need to compare light output. What wattage were your twin tube fluorescents? If they were 'standard' 58 watt fluorescents then a 60 watt LED with better efficiency (and not so old presumably) is going to be comparable. Doing a quick search I found that the 'best' T8 fluorescents are 70 lumens/watt, the above LED battens are 120 lumens/watt. So 'best' (and new) T8 will output 2 x 70 x 58 lumens, thats 8120 lumens, the 60 watt LEDs above give 7200 lumens. Almost certainly the LEDs will be brighter for much longer than the T8s.

While we are *on topic* can someone (Adam?) discuss the published inrush current for Sylvania Toledo T8 5ft. LED lamps?

Inrush current said to be 23.8 amps! which puts a severe restriction on the number of fittings per switch.

Something to be said for leaving the old inductive ballasts in circuit?

Do the HF ones fire up straight away without flicker but have a pinkish bit in the middle that takes a few minutes to fully brighten and turn white up when it is cold?

published where pl?

yes they fire up straight away but are dim white from one end to the other end and take about 5 mins to reach full brightness

CPC Farnell

That seemed stupidly high and precise so I too looked at the Sylvania site and like Fredxx found they give 4A.

Still a bit much if this for where you have umpteen tubes. So I think you may be in the market for a current limiter (or more than one). Them's beyond my ken so (as usual) I'll await with interest those what know.

I would hardly call it "dim white". It might not be full brightness for a minute or so, but it's easily enough for most purposes. And when they reach full brightness, their output is better in terms of lumens than led equivalents (*not* lumens/watt - although I do wonder about Chinese lumens...). Try these comparisons:

And before anyone complains that leds have a tighter beam angle than fluos, the one linked to above is 330°, compared to 360° for the fluo - hardly a significant difference.

Not for us when nipping into the garage one cold frosty dark night to grab a pack of something out of the freezer in said garage! :-)

Obviously not so much of a problem when working in the garage on a project as I can wait for the lights to warm up.....

And when they

Consider just replacing the fitting.

Many (most) of the LED batten lights are plastic and so lightweight that you could probably carry a box of 50 of them with ease.

Many are fitted with clips. You screw 2 or 3 small clips into the ceiling and the whole fitting just clips into these - a 10 second job to click them into the clips.

A couple I've fitted come with plugs/sockets for the power.

I have a problem with one of my knees and when working at low level in my house I've got into the habit of digging out my garden kneeler

Plus LEDS direct all their light downwards (maybe 120 degree beam angle) hence not requiring a reflector to bounce the light back as in a traditional tube.

Even LED replacement tubes may look/be brighter for the same reason.

Batten fittings don't need a reflector because the LEDSs point downwards with a beam angle of maybe 120 degrees.

The last batten light I fitted was only 40mm deep so you may also gain some headroom.

Yes there are twin LEDs - I have two of them. They are arranged as two strips of multiple LEDs within a single housing. The singles from the same range just have one strip. Almost a direct equivalent of the twin tube fluorescents, but with non-replaceable parts.

Perhaps you missed my original post. The current T8 (one per fitting) aren't as bright as the older T12. By quite some margin.

I'd also like to see data which proves hard driven LEDs don't lose output with age. My experience says different.

My current setup - twin florries and relector - gives very even illumination over the bench. I set their height above it to do just this. Last thing I want is a tighter beam.